


power (the ability to determine another man's luck)

by alphamikefoxtrot



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, and not one solid plan either, not sure if the ship needs to be tagged since there's no plan for a ship, so really the author has no power over this, yet they're already married
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-10 21:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19912324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphamikefoxtrot/pseuds/alphamikefoxtrot
Summary: Don't steal books from an angel. He might befriend you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Bookshop](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19475533) by [Fyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre). 



> Thank you for enabling this bit of feverish daydream. All mistakes are mine, all characters are other people's.

There were quite a few deeds an angel would consider as capital sin. This view, of course, was first spoken by God, their creator. God even wrote it down as the Ten Commandments. Aziraphale, being an angel and thus was made by God, also condoned this view. Only, if he had been God’s copywriter back then he would have helped by adding numerous footnotes and thus would have also turned the Ten Commandments into the World’s First Terms & Conditions[1]. For example, he would have added a subsection about intellectual and property rights under theft. This also happened to be the point of view he was currently _passionately_ arguing about with a demon of a certain familiarity. It was only good for the carpet of the bookshop that the angel was not pacing.

“Stealing is _wrong_ , Crowley. Why do they keep doing it?”

The demon, who had no qualms about wearing down carpets but had opted for his favourite corner on the sofa, replied, “ _You’ve_ stolen before.” He also had no qualms about stealing.

Aziraphale snapped his head at him, aghast. “I most certainly have _not_! I _saved_ those books! The fates they could have suffered--!”

“Eh,” he shrugged. “So they--those kids were _saving_ the book from you--”

Before Crowley could say anything else, Aziraphale cut him to the quick. “B-but _why_? What for? My--those-- _the_ books are already safe with _me_. I dusted them, I keep a perfect ambient temperature at all times to keep the old parchments from curling and yellowing… You do realise I even _restored_ quite a few of them--”

The demon made a stuttering noise intended to stop Aziraphale from speaking. “Yeah, _sure_ angel, but you don’t let _anyone_ else read ‘em save for your own eyeballs. What’s the point of books if not _read_?” Crowley wasn’t big on books[2] but at least he knew what they were made _for_. 

Sadly, the angel wasn’t listening. “--and--and he did not even make the effort to put on a pair of gloves! Do you know how _fragile_ the texts he intended to--to abscond with? I almost wish humanity were still chipping away at slabs of stones to send information back and forth if they weren’t so blo-- _very_ heavy.

“And I do treasure them Crowley, for all the knowledge they contain. Don’t say it as though I did not want other people to know what I know and have learned from books written by humans through the millennias--that’s the whole point of the _printing_ press, wasn’t it? They can make _copies_ of many, many books very quickly--it’s all very ingenious… But a lot of _my_ books are first editions with all their little quirks like--like that Bible!

“Do you even know which book he--the one they call _Ripper_ , was trying to steal? It was _True Magic of the Middle Order_ [3]! That boy has _powers_ , Crowley. It runs in his family and I can _feel_ it. He might... _do_ something…” The angel trailed off, arms falling dejectedly to his sides as he did not remember having stood up. “Er.”

Crowley waited.

“My point is, I have stopped him from doing something _incredibly_ foolish and potentially dangerous--not only to themselves, but to others as well. I am doing my job. There.” Aziraphale cleared his throat and sat by his writing desk once more.

His sunglasses perched low, Crowley tilted his head, neither agreeing with or disputing the angel. The Arrangement allowed them this freedom, and so this freedom will he keep. As a demon he was all about freedom, you see[4]. “Ah, thisss boy… who did you say his name was? _Ripper_?”

“That’s what his _friends_ called him. His real name is Rupert Giles--” At the raised brow on Crowley’s face, he nodded. “ _Those_ Giles, yes. Of the Watcher’s Council.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1]This joke had to wait for the 21st century to catch on, where everyone was up to their necks in Terms & Conditions & Not Reading Them. To Aziraphale, who was not human and loved to read, this rule did not apply.
> 
> [2]Once, and not too long after the internet was developed, Crowley had taken one of those funny human tests that had titles like ‘What Kind of Learner Are You?’. The results told him he was an auditory learner. Then after records were invented and audiobooks became popular, he never looked back.
> 
> [3]Most human-writ magic books are balderdash. This is fact. _True Magic of the Middle Order_ was not written by a human.
> 
> [4]Crowley didn’t remember much, but he entertained the thought that even back when he was an angel he had also been all about freedom. It was popular, but then everybody started Falling and no one would want anything to do with it ever again. Much like disco, really.


	2. Chapter 2

The Watcher’s Council is a cult. This is a fact. Why bother keeping with the secret if it _isn’t_ a cult? One might as well form a government and claim a land for the population[5]. The Watcher’s Council is a cult because not only it is run by privileged, middle-aged white men for generations, they also induct their members while they were young and knew very little about the rest of the world. Case in point: Rupert Giles’ father had been a Watcher, and so was his mother, and her father, and his mother, and so on[6].

While other cults went off persecuting other humans or ran around a circle in the nude under the moonlight to collapse under their own folly[7], the Watcher’s Council began, and has since stayed, as humanity’s first defence against the forces of darkness by conjuring a primal power and shoving those powers into an unsuspecting young girl whom they would later call the First Slayer.

Alright, that wasn’t how the passage in the book went but Rupert thought it was not at all dissimilar. _That wasn’t very PC of them, was it? Did anyone even_ ask _what the girl would have wanted?_ The young man marked the page in disinterest and a number of disdain. The campus library, for all its stone walls and looming archways had began to feel awfully cramped. Rupert decided he was absolutely looking forward to be shitfaced at the Roxy. He’d promised his new mates he would show up for the gig, after all.

That was the last time Rupert Giles was seen in Oxford.

***

Demons were a great deal more resilient than humans. This one in particular was yawning tiredly as he had been exerting his energies and focus towards something positively _demonic_. Namely, stalking[8]. He was very good at it. Ripper[9] and his mates noticed absolutely nothing while he got everything he wanted to know. Rowdy, loud, cocky, and absolute idiots, the lot of them[10]. The only problem was that some of them actually had powers[11],[12] as Aziraphale had mentioned, yet without as many brains to wield them.

However, the thing that was giving him headache of the highest order was the stench of He--er, _Below_ on those young humans. The angel couldn’t have noticed[13]. Crowley had a niggling itch on the roof of his mouth back in the bookshop, one which he ascribed to alcohol but was evidently wrong about. One of them must have cast a spell to sneak into Aziraphale’s bookshop and that allowed whatever it[14] was to continuously but covertly draw power from them. The reconnaissance around the youths’ squat proved this to be true though it was not one he could name[15].

See, this was where things became complicated. Humans calling on powers from Below rarely did anything good[16]. Young humans with powers invoking the powers of an unknown demon with questionable purposes? Doubly so. Crowley thought to tell Aziraphale about it, except it would have proved the angel’s point that those kids are up to no good[17]. Which should have been _good_ , because he _was_ a demon in league with chaos and general mayhem, yet he couldn’t let Aziraphale be right about his books and wasn’t that a nice bit of situation a demon found himself in? Crowley’s headache pounded in his temples since the murky, acrid smell of incense and demonic essence burned his nostrils. He wanted to take a nap and think about it all later[18]. Then he got into his flat and did exactly that.

Neither angels nor demons had omniscience, which was exactly how neither Heaven's nor Hell's agents on Earth saw what happened next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [5]This is one of the less popular theories on how the United States of America was founded--which does not necessarily make it less true. 
> 
> [6]One of the more esteemed Watcher’s Council members was quoted saying the Giles family had gone “All the way back to the _fourteenth bloody century_.”
> 
> ****
> 
> [7]And not an insubstantial amount of illicit substances.
> 
> ****
> 
> [8]The demon discovered a new fascination towards punk. It’s hard, loud, fast, and above all pisses off snotty old humans. Not sure about the haircuts, though.
> 
> ****
> 
> [9]As nicknames go, Crowley had no judgement. He only wanted to know how that one came about, as in if he was Willed into existence with Rupert as a name, he would have wanted to change it too.
> 
> ****
> 
> [10]In short, fulfilled every last one of the demon’s expectations about today’s youth. Crowley would have loved to take bets on how long they would last, but the angel wouldn’t condone that sort of odds. He knew he’d lose.
> 
> ****
> 
> [11]Mainly [in a descending order] Ripper, Ethan, Diedre, and Randall. Four out of the core six and God only knows how many others were in on it.
> 
> ****
> 
> [12]For more information on human magics please refer to _Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis_ (Newton, 1697). For a different style of human magic please ask your local librarian or your mother.
> 
> ****
> 
> [13]Dense beings as they are, angels sensed _love_.
> 
> ****
> 
> [14]Must have been a demon--Crowley was willing to bet one of his shoes for it.
> 
> ****
> 
> [15] He had not socialized with other demons since 1921 and thus saw no need to update the phone book either.
> 
> ****
> 
> [16]Neither did calling on powers from Above but that was not Crowley’s jurisdiction, was it.
> 
> ****
> 
> [17]Aziraphale’s _‘I told you so’_ s were particularly bitter even though he was the angel. Crowley wondered where he had learnt it from.
> 
> ****
> 
> [18] _“When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.”_ (Le Guin, 1969). It was Crowley’s favourite words from an author, if only he had read the book.
> 
> ****


End file.
